It is a shame that Google continues to dominate with no real competition in sight. I have always preferred Yahoo’s search results, myself. They seem to be the most relevant. Google’s search results are too heavily biased toward a web site’s back links. What you end up with are sites that have good links and usually are not what the searcher was hoping to find. Hopefully, the MSN - Yahoo merger will take place and offer some real competition, bettering search for all users.

While the search isn’t completely there sometimes, it’s getting there. I think Live Search just needs more users to sort out the algorithim better. Google’s probaly only winning because it still has 1/2 the world’s users. More people = more relevant. Though seeing a video of Google’s Master Plan, and hearing them make stupid complaints against Vista search, and tons of other bad stuff, has made me lost a bit of love for them. I might switch to Live Search some day. Google has it right, but pretty much any other search engine can too. If Google keeps going at this rate, I wouldn’t be surprised if many users drop it.

I question the “the algorithm” branding. I’m sure it was inspired by Verizon’s success with “It’s the Network”, but just seems like a hollow claim when Google is still considered the most technically competant (ironically, I think i spelled that wrong).

My advice that Ask follows Nike’s decade old lead… Find a few technical influencers and have them endorese your brand… Steve Jobs? Reilley? Some NASA guy? Professor from Cal Tech? The Dali Lama?

See where I’m going with this? People follow others… just show some big timers claiming “they are off Google and on to Ask”.

I do have to give Live some props though. I’ve actually been using it a little bit of late and have been pleasantly surprised. The relevancy isn’t quite up to snuff with Google or Yahoo yet, but it’s not too far off either and usually gives you want you need within the first few results. And aesthetically, I find their results page more visually pleasing than the results page on Google.

It’ll be interesting to see what happens as more people gradually migrate over to Vista (which has great built-in desktop search with the default option of getting Live web results too.) I’m sure Google will continue to dominate, but it might open people’s eyes to other options too (which is no doubt why Google is currently complaining about getting their desktop search product into Vista.)